Human hands evolved for punching

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Human hands evolved for punching

Postby John the Monkey mind » Thu Dec 20, 2012 7:49 am

Interesting hypothesis has been put forward on the evolution of the hands.

'Because the experiments show the proportions of the human hand provide a performance advantage when striking with a fist, we suggest that the proportions of our hands resulted, in part, from selection to improve fighting performance.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... erity.html

It also has some nice data on striking power.

The first experiment tested the hypothesis that humans can hit harder with a fist.
The researchers had 10 men - aged 22 to 50 and all of them with boxing or martial arts experience - hit a punching bag as hard as they could.
Each subject delivered 18 blows, or three of each for six kinds of hits: overhead hammer fists and slaps, side punches and slaps, and forward punches and palm shoves.
The bag was instrumented to allow calculation of the force of the punches and slaps.
To the researchers' surprise, the peak force was the same, whether the bag was punched with a fist or slapped with an open hand.
However, a fist delivers the same force with one-third of the surface area as the palm and fingers, and 60 per cent of the surface area of the palm alone.
So the peak stress delivered to the punching bag - the force per area - was 1.7 to three times greater with a fist strike compared with a slap.
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Re: Human hands evolved for punching

Postby pete5770 » Fri Dec 21, 2012 9:26 pm

John the Monkey mind wrote:Interesting hypothesis has been put forward on the evolution of the hands.

'Because the experiments show the proportions of the human hand provide a performance advantage when striking with a fist, we suggest that the proportions of our hands resulted, in part, from selection to improve fighting performance.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... erity.html



I think the key words in all of this are "in part". I'm sure "part" of the evolutionary process with the hands was to fend off things and grab things.
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Re: Human hands evolved for punching

Postby ManLar » Thu Nov 13, 2014 2:16 am

:shock: Interesting what human are capable of when fighting.
http://www.ausfight.com
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Re: Human hands evolved for punching

Postby yeniseri » Wed Nov 26, 2014 5:12 pm

Kind of bizarre but my first guess would be, per evolution, hunting, eating, grasping etc but at some point in time one man found he could steal, rape and covet others property, which is a negative adaption in a continuing evolutionary process!
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Re: Human hands evolved for punching

Postby John the Monkey mind » Sat Nov 29, 2014 8:14 am

yeniseri wrote:Kind of bizarre but my first guess would be, per evolution, hunting, eating, grasping etc but at some point in time one man found he could steal, rape and covet others property, which is a negative adaption in a continuing evolutionary process!


Apes steal, rape, murder and covet others property so I think that goes way back.
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Re: Human hands evolved for punching

Postby Sanfung » Wed Jan 07, 2015 11:52 am

Wouldn't many of those things come from an even lower part of the behavioral mindset? I would think that the discovery of the ability to take things from other people and the like comes from what one might call the 'reptile brain,' and behaving as such is congruous with the behavior of certain animal species that can and do take food and supplies from other members of their own species.

If anything eventually humans discovered the fact that they feel the urge to do those things and can actually stop them based on a moral boundary line.

As Pete brought up before, I'm sure that some of the evolutionary process involved the need to fend things off - including people behaving on those impulses - and those who wanted to act within their own moral boundary lines needed to learn a bit about how to fend off others.
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